The match commander - the woman who led Wednesday night's policing operation - came out fighting yesterday as her force's behaviour during the battle of Piccadilly was called into question.

Justine Curran, 41, was Greater Manchester Police's first female assistant chief constable when she was appointed in February last year.

With a remit that covers counter-terrorism and policing the Manchester metropolitan area, she is no stranger to big events and crowd control.

Most will have paled, however, in comparison to the presence of 100,000 despondent, frustrated and in many cases drunken Rangers fans. The force's initial reaction when Rangers reached the final - from a chief superintendent - was that Rangers fans without tickets should stay away. She and her colleagues may now be wondering if they called it right first time.

As well as condemning the "minority of thugs" who had committed damage and assaulted her officers, Ms Curran went so far as to release publicly CCTV footage of some of the incidents.

The result was an internet battle of video clips that proved almost as big an attraction as the game itself.

Ms Curran was born in 1967 in Sheffield but has lived most of her life in Lancashire. She has a BA Hons from Hull University and an MA in police management from Manchester University.

Married to - but comfortably outranking - a fellow police officer, she has two young children.